Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg had blunt words for Donald Trump and Sen. J.D. Vance’s recent attempts to blame liberal rhetoric for two alleged assassination attempts on the former president’s life. On CNN Tuesday morning, Goldberg remarked, “This whole thing has gotten really dumb.”
Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Dispatch, made his comments just hours after Vance and Trump publicly condemned Democrats for supposedly inciting political violence, while simultaneously facing criticism for spreading false stories, such as immigrants eating pets. Vance argued Monday night that liberals must be to blame, using the flawed reasoning that “no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris.”
When CNN anchor Kasie Hunt asked for Goldberg’s reaction to this claim, he responded with laughter, highlighting the absurdity of the argument. “Vance has a gift for phrasing things in such a way as to enrage the very people,” Goldberg said. “I don’t find this a difficult conversation to have, I find it a difficult conversation to listen to. I think this whole thing has gotten really dumb”, told BBC.
Goldberg criticized both Vance and Trump for their position, which Trump also repeated on Fox News, saying it implied the violence was “aimed at the wrong person.” Trump suggested that such hostility should be directed at his political enemies, who, in his view, are “the ones that will destroy the country.”
“That’s really a stupid position to take,” Goldberg stated. He emphasized that it’s dangerous to assign blame for acts of violence solely based on political rhetoric, noting that such an argument oversimplifies the actions of “madmen.”
The columnist referenced the July 13 attempted attack on Trump by Thomas Matthew Crooks in Pennsylvania, for which the motives remain unclear. Crooks, 20, was shot dead by the Secret Service, leaving few clues about his political beliefs. Goldberg contrasted this with Ryan Wesley Routh, a 58-year-old arrested in Florida, who supported Ukraine and expressed disappointment with Trump despite having voted for him in 2016.
Goldberg summed up the complexity of such issues, stating, “In a country of 337 million people, I could talk right now about how vests have no sleeves and make someone violently angry. We cannot order our entire political system around that.” In short, Goldberg argued that pinning the blame for individual acts of violence on political rhetoric from either side oversimplifies the issue and ignores the deeper complexities of such incidents.